Consumption
by flecksofpoppy
Summary: What comes from a contract made with a demon. End of anime season one spoilers. Underage themes  abstract .


My first Black Butler fic. Spoilers ahoy. Ciel/Sebastian (abstract more than anything else). Takes place at the last episode of Season 1. Underage themes.

* * *

><p><strong>Consumption<strong>

Having one's soul eaten is a curious affair, and like a delicate dessert, requires a palatable main ingredient.

Crème brûlée is fired with a torch, made delicate and crisp on the surface, melted sugar becoming a deceptively solid top. The icrunch, when tapped with the back of a spoon with a certain amount of grace, a certain flick of the wrist, is what first cracks it, lets the sweetness of its liquid center free.

Sebastian has grown a taste for such things, even in servitude. There is some strange satisfaction in the design of what humans deem most elegant, most palatable, what they will consume based on class, personality, actions.

Delicious is a selective term, a word that holds as much ambiguity in the demon world as in the human world; perhaps transcending any plane.

Desire for the delicate crunch of something wonderful, lying beneath the surface.

Ciel's memories are like reeds in the river that isn't really a river, a series of snakes slithering in tandem, orderly and so much like their master, even as Sebastian rows, he thinks that perhaps the creatures obey even here. These strange serpentine forms that represent what has made Ciel human, and yet, they are remnants much in the way Ciel's childhood has been.

Sebastian craves as he has never craved; and somehow, he dreads the feast laid out before him. Not for fear of death or loss, just as Ciel fears neither, but for what he will become after indulging.

Indulgence is a human trait, and Sebastian is far from human. Greed and lust, also sickly, dull human traits; Sebastian craves and lusts after Ciel's soul, because it is a delicacy he has never tasted. And change is important after sampling every dessert and every flavor the world has to offer, both this plane and otherwise.

When their boat hits the island, after the twisting shapes have finally been laid to rest at the bottom of the water, simple things like a lost ring or a body, sinking down, Sebastian has more faith in his master than he ever has. And somehow, even now, Ciel remains master of everything; even his own life that slowly rots away under otherworldly currents.

****

Having one's soul eaten is a curious affair, and even with the last step that plummets him into the crevasse, Ciel rejects gentleness-the reassurance, humanity even, of a demon.

In the fading mist of solidity, Ciel thinks that maybe this is what kissing feels like; remembers Elizabeth in the garden, her lips awkwardly pressed to his. Ten, surprised, child-like.

Ciel wonders if having one's soul eaten is like eating chocolate gateau, when the sweetness gets to be so much it turns into bitterness, the cocoa burning a hole into the throat. The dark waves of chocolate that never yield in the swallow, the heavy breathing of lungs so close to stomach, the single small detail of the mouth inhaling and exhaling and-

"Etch it into me."

Ciel is not afraid; he is not triumphant. He is not even reverent, so much as curious. He is 13 and seems complete.

When his servant says he will be gentle, Ciel rejects him.

Yet, when he feels the strange, inhuman fingertips on his face, the eye patch drop, so much intimacy, he simply yields; he gives in, he says his soul is as sweet as gateau because he knows, with too much, it will give only bitterness.

This is his first real kiss-otherworldly, young, unsure-even for a demon, a different type of insecurity, of unexpected vulnerability, as if there is a ceremony happening here, as if the ring of bluebells wrapped around Ciel's thumb are a simple family heirloom that signifies nothing more than his duty, even when it was broken temporarily and he was freed for nothing at all.

Ciel does not seek freedom; but poor Lizzy ... _Lizzy..._

Powdered sugar in the garden through a smile, sticking there when the tulips were rising red out of the earth, when color did not represent a scar, when topiaries rose out of the soil, growing because they were _alive._

They wilt and distantly, Ciel hears Abberline in his mind, pathetic and human; Ciel also remembers his lie to Sebastian as he was engulfed by the Thames.

_Counting down from ten, nine, eight..._

And then he sinks like cinema catching fire, melting into rivers of celluloid currents; everything is simply a play, an act of how the chess board moves, a series of events that his god-like hand guides.

But it all flows out now to one river, one lake, one ocean where the water is so deep, even red eyes love the dark creatures that don't require light to live.

And there, Ciel's skin begins to peel back like the delicate petals of a flower unblossomed, forced away from its center; when it hurts enough that being flayed alive does indeed cause pain, he begins to shed his human shell. He begins to realize his own form, his true form.

Ciel closes his eyes, for the indecency of it; he shuts them tight, even as he kisses and kisses and somehow cries in his throat, cries for this vulnerability found only in hell.

There is an alley; there is a memory of cold, of blue cloth folded around him and a feather that stuck out of his hat in the style of the nobility, of the _mark_ meaning that he was nobility, that he was a subject. Such wings, such feathers-blue, to match his eyes.

He bends there, against the cold, hard imaginary brick, and there is a sleek body, a swift movement. There is a rough tongue against his fingertips, and what's left of him smiles and strokes its head.

A silky tail winds around his legs tightly, but he doesn't struggle.

And for the first time in years, Ciel Phantomhive smiles as the dark gently touches his face like night without stars.


End file.
